Thessaloniki civil court dismisses €240 wage claim without finding cash was paid

A civil court in Thessaloniki dismissed Eleni Vardaki’s claim for €240 in wages from her final café shifts, finding that she had proved the money was earned but not that it remained unpaid. It ordered no payment from Stavros Delis.

The ruling left the central factual dispute unresolved: Vardaki denied receiving cash, while Delis said he had paid her. The court did not find that cash had actually changed hands; it decided that the uncertainty defeated Vardaki’s request for payment.

The handwritten shift sheet established the €240 total because both parties accepted the calculation. But a record of wages earned was not, by itself, a record of wages still outstanding. Although the same sheet appeared twice in the record, those entries did not constitute separate evidence of payment.

The absence of a payment acknowledgment showed only that the sheet did not document payment. It did not establish that no cash had been delivered. The court also declined to assume that a signature would normally have been required, because the evidence did not establish that practice.

Delis’s cashbook entry had limits of its own. He had made it himself, it was unsigned, and no separate receipt or witness confirmed delivery. It supported his account but did not conclusively prove payment.

The decisive point was who had to prove the claim. Under the rules applied in the judgment, Vardaki had to establish both the wages earned and that they remained unpaid. Her denial was relevant evidence, but no additional independent evidence resolved the conflicting accounts. Weaknesses in Delis’s proof did not transfer that burden to him.

Vardaki sought the full €240, relying on the shift sheet and her denial that she had signed for or received cash. Her representative argued that the missing signature, receipt and bank transfer supported nonpayment. Vardaki also said there had been no earlier paycheck problems, but the judgment recorded no separate evidence establishing that history.

Delis accepted the amount earned but argued that the sheet answered only the wage-calculation question. He relied on his cashbook entry while acknowledging that he had no independent confirmation that the cash changed hands. He asked the court to weigh the competing accounts rather than treat the missing signature as proof of nonpayment.

The dispute arose from Vardaki’s final shifts at Cup & Crumb in Thessaloniki. Neither the work performed nor the €240 calculation was contested; the entire claim turned on whether those wages had subsequently been paid in cash.

The judgment draws a narrow distinction between rejecting a payment claim and affirmatively finding payment. Its dismissal decides the claim on the evidence presented at this hearing, without establishing that Delis delivered the money.